The reasoning behind Mumbai's "Seasee" bundling street food from six Southeast Asian countries into one restaurant

"Seasee," a roughly 60-seat street food restaurant serving dishes from six Southeast Asian countries in one place, opened in Mumbai's fashionable Bandra area on June 24, 2026. It was created by two restaurant entrepreneurs, Saamir Chandnani and Rinchen Angchuk, who also run the Japanese-Korean restaurant "Mirai" in the same Bandra neighborhood. For Japanese seasoning and food makers, this opening offers concrete clues for reading how India's affluent and middle classes are embracing Asian flavors. The idea of bundling cuisines from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines into a single space, together with an interactive wok-station experience design, reveals room for a company's own products to fit in.

What did Seasee open in Bandra?

Seasee is a restaurant conceived by two founders who traveled Southeast Asia's street food scenes and kept coming back to the idea of "a crowded food street I kept returning to." In its roughly 60-seat space, the menu spans the six target countries, including tom yum, Vietnamese pho, Thai mango salad, chicken satay, Singapore chili crab, pad thai, mie goreng, Thai green curry, Hainanese chicken rice, pad kra pao, and Malaysian char kway teow. Desserts also use Southeast Asian ingredients, such as mango sticky rice and a pandan-flavored Basque cheesecake.

At the center of the restaurant is an interactive wok station where customers can customize noodles or rice to their liking. Those who order directly at the station get priority service, a design that brings the street-stall sense of "cooked right in front of you" into the restaurant. The interior was handled by Holy Duck, a Mumbai team specializing in dining spaces, built around a communal-table layout with a street-stall feel.

What it means that the same founders' previous restaurant was "Japanese cuisine"

What's worth noting is that Seasee and Mirai were created in succession in the same Bandra neighborhood by the same two people. Mirai was a restaurant that combined Japanese and Korean cuisine as "yin and yang," with a lineup that included nigiri sushi, ramen, and even a vegan version of unadon. In other words, these two founders first translated Asian flavors — Japan and Korea — into a space for the affluent, and then broadened their scope to six Southeast Asian countries.

The sequence of a Mumbai restaurant entrepreneur building on experience with Japanese cuisine before expanding into Southeast Asia is suggestive for Japanese food and seasoning makers. In the trade area where nigiri sushi and ramen succeed at Mirai, there is already fertile ground for accepting shoyu, miso, dashi, and vegan-friendly Japanese ingredients. And while Seasee's wok station puts nam pla, chili, and Southeast Asian herbs front and center, this kind of experiential format — "assembling Asian seasoning in front of the customer" — is also a design into which Japanese seasonings can later be inserted.

India's Asian food needs, by the numbers

Behind this is growing demand for Asian cuisine in India. India's sauce, dressing, and condiment market is estimated at about $4.73 billion in 2024, projected to reach about $8.14 billion by 2030, at an estimated CAGR of about 9.56%. Japan's exports of sauces and seasonings to India were about $900,000 in 2023, up about 11.94% year on year.

Converted at roughly ¥155 to the dollar, Japan's sauce and seasoning exports to India come to only about ¥140 million, a negligible share of the overall market. Put the other way around, the more "pan-Asian" restaurants like Seasee increase, the more room opens up for Japanese seasonings to slip in. Note that these are estimates based on external market research and trade statistics, and the yen conversion uses the exchange rate at the time of writing as a guide.

How it is being received locally and in the industry

Local media introduce Seasee as a format that "completes a six-country street-food experience in one restaurant," highlighting the design of its interactive wok station and communal tables. The founders describe the motivation behind the opening: "after years in hospitality, as we traveled through Southeast Asia, we kept finding ourselves back on the crowded food streets."

Among restaurant industry insiders, there is a view of Seasee's Southeast Asian direction, following Mirai's Japanese-Korean line, as an "expansion of an Asian food portfolio" by the same team. Rather than narrowing each restaurant to one country, the approach of bundling multiple countries under the theme of street food is seen as aiming to give customers "a showcase of Asian flavors" as an experience. The trend of reconstructing street food in upscale spaces continues among Mumbai's top restaurants, and Seasee is an opening that belongs to that lineage.

Implications Japanese companies should read into this

From this one restaurant, a concrete action Japanese food and seasoning makers can take is "a proposal to slip one Japanese seasoning into the Southeast Asian street-food format." Seasee's wok station sells the experience of customers matching their preferred sauce to noodles or rice. Here there is room to wholesale, as one option among others, Japanese shoyu-based teriyaki sauce, yuzu-kosho, or sesame sauce — "Japanese seasonings that also fit naturally into Southeast Asian dishes." Because the street-food framework has loose national boundaries, these would not look out of place alongside Thai chili or Vietnamese nuoc mam.

The fact that the same team runs both a Japanese restaurant (Mirai) and a Southeast Asian restaurant (Seasee) in Mumbai encourages thinking of a seasoning supply destination not as one restaurant but as "multiple concepts under the same owner." Owners who run restaurants with an understanding of Japanese ingredients tend to be more receptive to trial adoption of new seasonings. There is also a path for Japanese dried vegetables and dried fruits, as topping ingredients for desserts and salads, to enter through such experimentally minded new restaurants.

It also helps to look at similar moves in other cities as a reference. Together with the case of a Thai restaurant in Hyderabad (Baan Phadthai's entry into Hyderabad) and store trends in Mumbai's Colaba (The Colaba new-store case), it becomes clear that Southeast Asian and pan-Asian restaurant openings are not concentrated in one particular city.

Impact on the market

A format like Seasee's, which "bundles multiple countries into one restaurant," changes the unit of transaction for seasoning suppliers. A restaurant specializing in one country only needs a handful of seasonings, but a restaurant covering six countries sources sauces, pastes, and herbs for each country at the same time. For the supplying side, this means being able to propose multiple SKUs in a single negotiation. It becomes viable to bundle Japanese seasonings as one corner of an "Asian ingredient set."

Also not to be overlooked is the growth of Mumbai's nighttime consumption. As the nightlife trend in Bandra (the spread of Mumbai's nighttime consumption) shows, street-stall-style restaurants can expect customers around the clock. Seasee's design, using Southeast Asian herbs and tropical fruit in its cocktails, also leaves an opening for Japanese citrus and syrups as drink ingredients.

Practical information and related links

Seasee is located in Bandra, Mumbai, and serves street food from six Southeast Asian countries in a roughly 60-seat space. When Japanese food and seasoning makers pitch to Indian restaurants, it is realistic to start from a restaurant where the same owner runs multiple concepts, and negotiate to have them trial one Japanese seasoning. Tracking which cities are seeing an increase in Asian food openings makes it easier to pick where to pitch.

Summary: the next move

There are three concrete next actions Japanese companies can take from Seasee's opening. First, list up the owner class in Mumbai who run both Japanese and Southeast Asian restaurants at the same time, and prioritize approaching operators who understand Japanese ingredients. Second, rather than pitching a standalone seasoning, propose teriyaki sauce or yuzu-kosho for the wok station in the context of "Japanese seasoning that also suits Southeast Asian cuisine." Third, supply dried vegetables and dried fruits in small lots as topping ingredients for desserts and salads, starting with new restaurants open to experimentation. This kind of concrete sales design, starting with one company and one restaurant, is the realistic entry point into India's condiment market, which is growing to a $4.73 billion scale.

Sources

• Restaurant India — Seasee opens in Bandra, bringing Southeast Asian street food to Mumbai
• Indian Retailer — Explore the Authentic Flavors of Japanese and Korean Food with Mirai, Mumbai
• Tridge — Rising Demand for Japanese Sauces in India
• MarkNtel Advisors — India Sauces, Dressings & Condiments Market Size & Forecast, 2030